On the last day of September the weather turned cold and wet, fall is definitely here. Our excavation contractor sent his assistant to backfill our foundation. 2 loads of drain rock and 5 loads of "pit run" that was mostly sand brought the level up to grade. The assistant is a couple of levers short of being a skilled operator, but at least we can go ahead with the building.

Our efforts to rent a reach forklift or buy an older crane have come to naught, so we have gone ahead pressing forward with the materials at hand. Our people have been raising great halls for millennia before diesel and hydraulic equipment. With an old junk trailer some rope, and a couple of trees that had been moved to make way for the sewage drain field, we improvised and got started on Monday.

Here are the recent photos.

Monday 10-3-05

After the backfill was complete I took a few photos of how it looks after the backfill and before the building.

Another view of the foundation

On Friday during the backfill it rained and rained. Then it rained some more. Our dust problems are over for the year. Now it's all mud.

In the previous web page there was a photo of sprinkler pipes in the trenches. Now I have color-coded pipes rising out of the future floor in the future utility closet.

Our garden gnome and coney still keep watch over the construction.

Making do with what is available, not being able to rent a reach forklift, we raised a couple of poles on an old trailer to hoist our steel.

Justin pauses after a day of fabricating an impromptu crane.

Here we are loading steel pillars from a pile that has sat west of the building for a couple of months.

It took all Monday morning to rig the junk crane, load the steel, and erect the first column. It's the first of many. Real construction of our home at last.

After lunch we started on the 2nd column. Here Jeff wire brushes the anchor bolts before setting the steel column.

The 2nd and 3rd columns took an hour each. Then we spent the rest of the afternoon sorting out the girts that go between columns and hold the siding. The girts were, of course, on the bottom of a large pile. In this photo we arrived back at the house site with the girts on our trailer ready to lift into place. That's for tomorrow.

TUESDAY 10-4-05

On Tuesday we spent the morning going to rent scaffold, after towing the big truck out of a mud hole. In the afternoon we put up the NW corner post and attached girts, then we transported all the rest of the girts from our steel pile in the lower level of our land and distributed them around the building where they belong,

WEDNESDAY 10-5-05

Wednesday morning we erected the next two columns on the west wall and installed girts. They building manufacturers always make you cut your own slots for cable cross bracing so here is Justin cutting slots in steel girts.

After lunch we loaded up the two I-beams that are the gable end beams and installed them. The steel frame for the west end is now complete. Here Justin adjusts and bolts the two beams together at the peak.

Standing back you can get a perspective of the whole west wall as the sun sets in the west.

Another view of the west wall framing.

THURSDAY 10-6-05

Thursday we began by installing another post on the south side, along with it's girts. Next we loaded and brought a load of purlins up from the lower pile. Purlins are the lighter beams that go between the main beam across the roof, whereas girts go between beams on the walls. By "lighter" we mean about 150 pounds each, an good lift for 2 men. With a dozen purlins lying ready we brought the south half of our first big roof truss up and hoisted it into place.

Justin climbs the steel and bolts the south half beam to the south post.

We hoist one section at a time. The middle sat on a scaffold tower while we went to get the other half. It was a good morning's work. Lunch was a little late.

Next the north half of the beam is hoisted into place.

Once in place Justin bolts them together.

By the end of Thursday we had our first truss complete, with 2 more to go. One purlin was raised to brace between our new beam and the end wall we did yesterday. Several more are lying below. They are a little heavy for two men just to hoist on ropes. We're still debating the best way to get them all up to the roof.

FRIDAY 10-7-05

By Friday afternoon we had the center high beam in place. We're getting a little faster. On Friday we installed two large posts, two smaller end corner posts on the east end, 8 girts, 1 purlin, and 2 beam halves. We quit early.

Justin is turning into a real ironworker. Here he "walks" right up the side of an I beam post..

After walking up the large steel post Justin fetches down the tag line from hoisting it..

It's been a tiring week, but a rewarding one. The work of the previous weeks, all the concrete foundations, is now buried and unseen. This week the building is feeling like a building at last. Of 16 large hoists we have completed 12, including all 6 large posts 2 of 4 end beams and 4 of 6 center span beams. The space to maneuver our pickup and trailer crane inside the house is getting tight with the boom up.